You've probably been told that playing jazz requires great ears well how do you actually
train your ears for jasmine position i'm going to give you 10 things you can do coming right up
so first it's important to talk about the two different kinds of ear training that can
be helpful for playing jazz number one is what i would call ear training fundamentals now think of
ear training fundamentals as kind of like grammar or learning the alphabet so a good example of an
ear training fundamental would be like interval ear training so if i play this snow what's a major
six duh okay that's a major six so being able to recognize intervals both descending and ascending
and then there's also chord recognition like is that a major seventh chord or a dominant seventh
chord it's a major seventh chord and then of course there's also chord progressions and so
on and so forth and while this is really helpful to have these ear training fundamentals and it's
really gonna give you an advantage if you work on these kinds of things you just have to keep
in mind that again this is the grammar and the alphabet of ear training and not necessarily
the kind of ear training that's going to help you make leaps and bounds in your jazz improvisation
so while i wouldn't at all ignore it or cast it to the side the next kind of ear training is the
one i want you to focus on even more so the second kind of ear training is called applied
ear training and applied ear training is the best for becoming a better jazz improviser so applied
ear training is when you're copying from music that you're actually hearing you're mimicking
music that you're hearing and most importantly you're connecting what you're hearing up here to
your instrument we call this muscle memory so the more we can get our muscle memory and our ears to
work together that's when the magic can really start happening for our jazz solos our comping
and bass lines and all of that stuff so with that being said let me go over 10 different ideas for
applied ear training that you can start practicing right away number one is to learn melodies of jazz
standards by ear so let's just say you want to learn the melody of the jazz standard just friends
right so what i would recommend you do is instead of going to a piece of sheet music
or the real book actually just go straight to the recordings get a slow downer to slow it
way down and go through and learn the melody by ear this is the most basic
applied ear training you can do which not only will help you memorize jazz standard a
lot better you'll start building that connection to your ear and your instrument and really the
event of actually the trial and error of hearing a sound and matching it on your instrument right
that in it of itself is already starting to build that ear to instrument connection that
the applied ear training methods i'm going to share with you are going to provide now
if you're one of those people that's like whoa brent i'd never learned anything about
ear before well you're in luck i have a free guide called learn jazz standards the smart way
which will help you learn melodies by ear with a five-step process i'll go ahead and leave a link
in the description or show notes below or you can also go to learnjazzstandardsthesmartway.com
and i'll send that to you for free right away now number two is learning a solo
lick or etude by ear so for example you might hear a cool altered lick like this
right it's just like a five to a one
and a great idea is if you hear something you like on a recording to stop and try to figure out what
those notes are now again you can use a slowdowner like amazing slowdowner to slow that down so you
can pick apart each note but again what we're doing is we're practicing that you know matching
all of those notes from what we're actually hearing on a recording to
something on our instrument that we can relate to
so just the fact that you're doing this whether it be a big piece of music like a solo or something
short like a lick this is really what's going to help you really develop that ear training
skills that are really going to help you with jazz improvisation now number three
is to take a lick into different keys take a look into different keys so for example you may learn
that altered lick that we just learned but how do we play that same lick in the key of
f major well you could play this
right or how do we play that in the key of a flat major
right so the ability to be able to play something in different keys
is not only further helping you internalize that piece of language that you may want to
play in your own solos it's forcing you to use the muscle memory on your instrument your knowledge of
music theory like what notes are in the key of a flat major and the sound that
you're hearing in your head because once you've already learned that lick in c
right you already have those sounds but to translate that into a different key
it sounds different to your ear because the notes are different but the melodic
phrase is the exact same so it's just another way to rearrange the puzzle pieces which will
further strengthen your ear to instrument connection now number four has a lot to
do with if you're playing an instrument like a guitar or a bass but this could
also apply to other instruments as well which is play a piece of music or lick for example
in a different position so one thing that might happen is if you're playing a lick like this
now this is a great jim hall two five one lick
you know sounds great but one thing that can happen especially if you play an instrument
like a guitar which is really a patternistic instrument is you make it locked into the muscle
memory of that and it becomes more heavily skewed towards the muscle memory side than the actual
ear side so what you want to do is try doing it in a different position so for example
let's try playing on a different part of the neck
right so that's another place on the neck i can play it in now that's in the same
octave let's try taking it up an octave
right so just by taking that into different positions on the instrument that i'm playing
is helping my ear really really lead rather than my muscle memory leading which is something easy
to do on an instrument like the guitar so make sure you're taking things into different positions
on your instrument as well to make sure that we're not losing anything in the cracks
number five is singing and then playing so perhaps you've been in the car before
or walking around and you can hear a great jazz line in your head well what you can do
is confirm the music that is in your head which by the way means you've internalized something
and try to translate that to your instrument so for example i might be hearing a line like
right that's a very classic b-boppy line charlie parker and try to figure that out
right and it might take you a few tries and trying to find the first note on your instrument but
this is another good practice that you can do is sing something and then try to play it back this
is also called melodic dictation when you hear something and you go ahead and try to do it right
away with also kind of like sight reading but for ear training right so you read a lot of music to
try to get better at reading well you just simply translate things that you're hearing to your
instrument a lot to get better at that side of things number six is composing your own solos now
composing your own solos is advice i give my inner circle members all of the time because it's really
helpful for you to confirm what you're hearing and work out ideas that you may want to have seep
into your improvisation organically but composing is also great for ear training because it allows
you to do more of that practice of taking what you're hearing up here and putting it onto your
instrument so composing is one that will also improve your ear training now number seven
is memorizing music a lot of the tips i've just given you are actually making the assumption that
you're memorizing music rather than reading music you really cannot practice ear training very well
and read music right reading is just a totally different thing than hearing music and translating
it to your instrument you're decoding a language right that's the written language versus
hearing and mimicking something back which is the ear training side of things so make sure whenever
you're learning a melody of a jazz standard or chord changes or a solo or a lick that you're
actually memorizing it even if you started out by reading it and learning it that way that
ultimately you are memorizing it it's gonna help in so many different arenas within
your jazz playing number eight is to learn jazz standards and then make sure you understand the
chord progressions learning jazz standards is the single most important thing that you can do that's
why in my inner circle membership we learn one new jazz standard every month because it's really just
that important but learning jazz standards is also helpful for ear training especially if you
understand what the chords are so for example autumn leaves it goes 2 5 1 and b flat major
and then 4 and then 2 5 1 in g minor okay so that's one way to analyze it with roman numerals
and what happens is the more i recognize the sound of a 2-5-1 then i'll hear a tune like tune-up
right and then i'll be like oh that sounds like a two five one so the more you hear chord
progressions over and over again that's the secret to starting to hear chord progressions by ear
is mostly you've just heard a two five one so many times you've heard a one six two five so many
times that when you hear it you just know what it is and number nine is to play along with jazz
records so this is where you're throwing on your charlie parker your michael brecker your throw
in the blank of what jazz musicians you like to listen to herbie hancock and you're literally
just playing along with them the benefits of this is a lot more than just ear training however one
thing that is helpful is you're reacting to what the musicians are playing so you may hear herbie
hancock play a line or you may hear wynton kelly play chords in such a way that causes you to
improvise and react a certain way or maybe john coltrane plays a high note and so then your next
thing that you're going to play is a high note so that's also applying what you're hearing to your
instrument more ways to practice this exact same skill now number 10 is to improvise free and when
i say free i just simply mean improvise without the constraints of chords or chord progressions
it could be whatever you want does not have to be about guard but an example would just be like this
right whatever i want to play and just let
my ear lead the way to make melodic resolutions so whether i'm playing in the key or outside of
the key i'm practicing the act of my ears guiding where i can make resolutions to
notes that sound pleasing to my ear and the more that you do that the easier it gets to
actually do that when you apply it to actual chord progressions and chords where there
are actual playgrounds that you're trying to play in now by the way i only touched a little bit on
hearing chords by ear which is kind of what i would consider a more advanced ear
training technique but i have a video on the screen right now that will literally give you
some actual strategies for starting to hear chord progressions by ear so that you could
hear a jazz standard and probably know it within the first two or three times you've listened to it
so check it out right there hope you found this video helpful if you did make sure you like the
video make sure you subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in the next video cheers